Femtosecond third-order optical nonlinearity of the GeS 2–Ga 2S 3–CdI 2 new chalcohalide glasses

Abstract

New chalcohalide glasses from the GeS 2–Ga 2S 3–CdI 2 glassy system have been prepared using the well-established melt-quenching method and its glass-forming region was given in this paper. According to the comprehensive consideration of thermal properties, the glass with the composition 0.8GeS 2–0.1Ga 2S 3–0.1CdI 2 was estimated to be the optimum composition within the studied glassy system. And its nonlinear refractive index n 2 of this glassy sample was estimated to be 7.5×10 −15 cm 2/W according to femtosecond time-resolved optical Kerr gate (OKG) measurement technique. The full width at half-maximum of the third-order correlation signal was 155 fs. Widely transmittance window, good glass-forming ability, higher χ (3) and large electronic ultrafast OKG response make these glasses the potential applications in current photonic field such as ultra-fast all-optical switching devices.